Prof Pens Standard For Colonial Architecture

April 06, 2003|By DWIGHT SHURKO Special to the Daily Press

The unrelenting appearance of books and articles in any area of study, from the humanities to the hard sciences, necessitates that every so often effort be made to bring together, synthesize, and update that research into a coherent narrative.

For decades now the fast-growing field of Colonial American architecture has been in particular need of such a comprehensive and authoritative treatment.

James D. Kornwolf, professor emeritus at the College of William and Mary, fills this need with his monumental, three-volume "Architecture and Town Planning in Colonial North America" (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). Incorporating architecture, town planning and landscape design, Kornwolf's study covers North America (including Canada) from the Eastern colonies to Russian Alaska, from Spanish Florida to French Quebec, beginning with the arrival of the Spanish and French in the 1500s and extending through the first two decades of the 19th century. Over the course of 1,822 well- illustrated pages, the architectural development of the North American landscape north of the Rio Grande and Mexico unfolds with clarity and detail.

Although the influence of British architecture predominates in their colonies on the Eastern seaboard, Kornwolf has been careful to pay attention to the considerable roles played by other European nationalities and by African- Americans. Similarly, Kornwolf's account details how not only political events and other practical matters, but also aesthetic considerations contributed to architectural developments in North America.

Kornwolf's lively and informative text is set in double-columns for strain-free reading, and substantive but not numbing notes follow each chapter to guide the reader to the relevant scholarship. Also included are a comprehensive, well-organized bibliography, and two helpful appendices, covering "Builders of Colonial North America" (with 471 entries) and "Buildings of Colonial North America" (with over 1,500 entries).

Four thousand illustrations (2,699 black-and-white photographs and 1,196 detailed architectural drawings), most provided by Kornwolf, are effectively interwoven with the text. Too often architectural publications favor oversized glossy photos for the contemporary while relegating anything historical to postage- size status. Photographs and drawings here are of more than adequate size and clarity and their role in the success of this book for the reader cannot be underestimated.

The publication of "Architecture and Town Planning in Colonial North America" represents the culmination of a lifetime of study of architecture and its history, American and European, Colonial and Modern. A native of Wisconsin, Kornwolf received a B.F.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbanna and an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. For his Ph.D., Kornwolf went to London's Courtauld Institute of Art.

Arriving in Williamsburg in 1968, Kornwolf began a 34-year teaching career at William and Mary, where his classes included, in addition to art since 1800, a wide range of courses covering architectural history from the ancient Near East to the rise of Postmodernism at the end of the twentieth century. Kornwolf quickly developed a campus-wide reputation not only for his formidable course outlines and reading lists, but for his demonstrative and passionate lecturing style.

For two decades, Kornwolf and his wife Georgiana traveled extensively to countless pre-1800 buildings and sites in 32 states and five Canadian provinces where they took, in addition to making architectural sketches, over 8,000 photographs.

Back in Williamsburg, Kornwolf worked on his manuscript and prepared from the sketches most of the line drawings and plans that appear in the book, while Georgiana, whose assistance is acknowledged on the book's cover, served as an ongoing editor of the entire manuscript, in addition to dealing with the mountain of business correspondence required in a project of this magnitude.

The result of their countless hours of work is now available to an audience ranging from the interested general reader to the scholarly specialist. Although the hardcover edition comes with a hefty price ($375), a paperback copy may eventually be published.

Whether the reader consults a library copy or invests in one for his or her personal library, the Kornwolfs emphasize their work is intended to serve not only as a reference source but as an impetus to the reader to travel to the various buildings and sites discussed and illustrated in the book. Buildings undergo restoration or are destroyed, and both Kornwolfs are adamant in their belief that there is no substitute for visiting the actual buildings and sites.